


Ghost

by agreylady



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 13:56:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1552874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agreylady/pseuds/agreylady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A beginning and an end. The Boss/The Sorrow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost

            “I can’t believe it,” she says, as soon as the medic leaves. Her hand rests over her stomach. It no longer feels like her own. Blood is seeping out of the wound. _Only inches from your vital organs,_ the medic had said, _Only inches from the fetus. You were lucky._

  Lucky. _Lucky._

            He looks at the wall, then at her. His face is drawn. He always looks drawn. His glasses are cracked again, she notices, and the knees of his pants are stained with some unholy mix of blood and mud.

            Outside, the front is preternaturally quiet.

            He clears his throat. “You didn’t notice…?”

            “No.”

            He looks down. Almost disappointed in her.

            “You know how it is,” she says. “It was – careless of me.”

            “Stress and malnutrition,” he says, in that soft way of his. _Willfull denial._ He shifts closer and puts a hand on her cheek. “You weren’t…” She turns away.

            “I never imagined I would turn out this way.”

            “There’s no shame in it,” he says softly.  “It is what it is.”

            “You don’t understand.”

            “It wasn’t your fault-“

            “No. _No._ Damn it,” she says in English. It is hardly above a breath. “ _Damn it.”_

            He puts his hand on her belly, over her own, over her blood. “It’s all right,” he says, also in English. His English has a European lilt that reminds her a little of her father’s but softer. It makes her think of Sorrow in a library somewhere, reading and not killing because he’s not a machine like she is, he wasn’t raised for it and never wanted it, and she can’t _have a baby._ Not his baby. Not now. Not here.

Not her.

            The dawn is gray and weak. It seeps under the cracks of the tent. She can hear someone shouting from a distance. It will start again. War like a sea, fighting like waves. She wants to drown, but his hand is over hers and some piece of him and her together is in her belly.

            “It’s all right,” he says again, and this time, she lets him touch her cheek.

 

~

 

            She holds herself with all the composure she can.

            “You don’t look a day older,” he says, his voice echoing in the cavern. He stands up.

            “You do,” she says, and he ghosts a smile.

            His hair is silver. He looks old. But that doesn’t change the way she feels for him – it suits him, in fact, makes him more himself than ever before. He had always seemed so young to be so burdened.

            “I am. I won’t lie – these years have been hard. I can only imagine how they’ve been for you.”

            She swallows hard.

            "They think they can cage us. What do you think?”

            She stands motionless, speechless.

            “One of us is needed here,” he says.

            “They sent me a picture,” she replies.

            He points to his breast pocket. “For me, too. He looks like you. Handsome.”

            “Arrogant.”

            Another ghost of a smile.  “Proud. Brilliant.”

            “Angry.”

            “It wasn’t your fault.”

            They stand in silence.

            “I love you,” he says, very softly. He is smiling still, a ghost of a smile, but she can hear something breaking in the back of his throat if she listens hard enough. “Go on. I believe that my time is up.”

            The gun is in her hand. There is so much she wants to say to him, so many years wasted apart, moons walked and lives lived. But words are inadequate. She soaks in his presence for the last time. 

            “My time is up,” he says firmly. “Yours is not. His is not.”

            _You don’t know how hard it’s been without you_ or maybe _We’re all just pawns and it disgusts me_ or _I love you, too. I’ll love you forever._

            Instead, she raises her hand and pulls the trigger.

            His glasses crack and his corpse recoils, brains blown out on the cavern wall, dark in the dim light. Somewhere she hears running water, a bird singing.

            A reflexive gulp for air, the beginning of a sob, then nothing. Nothing. _Nothing._

A tremor runs through her. She controls it.

            She can’t look at him _\- he doesn’t look like me. What are you talking about? He looks exactly like you_ – even though he is her handiwork and she has never believed in anything so much as her own responsibility for murder. 

            She passes a minute, maybe two, breathing deeply. Finally, she opens her eyes.

            “I’m waiting,” she says, as though to hurry him along, but she does not feel his soul whisper back.

           

           

      


End file.
